Future Imperfect
by Vitellia
Summary: Draco Malfoy has had his life turned upside down by the shifting sands of Time not once but twice. Will history repeat itself, or will the third time be the charm? Sequel to Present Imperfect, and the final installment in this time turning trilogy.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**: This story is the third part of a trilogy. If you have not read the first, _Past Imperfect_, and the second, _Present Imperfect_, you won't know who some of the characters are, or what's different in this _very_ alternate universe. The story is completely written, but I'm going to post it by chapter so I can revise and polish it a bit more as I go. As with my last story, I am blessed to have two very fine writers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality, as beta readers.

* * *

Chapter 1: Prologue

"LUCIUS MALFOY! HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT'S IN THE PROPHET? SEVERUS AND I NEED TO TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW! OUR QUARTERS. HOGWARTS. NOW!"

It's been some years since Lucius has been woken with a Howler. The last time was about ten years ago when his lunatic sister-in-law Bellatrix, newly released from Azkaban, sent a screaming rant to Cissy accusing her of stealing some hideous tiara that belonged to Walburga. As though Cissy would wear a circlet of snakes devouring one another's tails. Honestly.

Fortunately Cissy isn't here to be awakened by Hermione shrieking like a banshee. Scorpius's wife Aurélie is having yet another baby (she's a distant cousin to the Weasleys) and Cissy is there as she has been for all the others. Five so far. Merlin. Is the woman trying to put him in the poor house? Draco laughed when Lucius said that, but one of the reasons the Malfoys have stayed rich over so many generations has been by having small families. This French Weaslette seems determined to undo centuries of fiscal responsibility in a single generation.

Lucius turns the shower on and steps under the hot spray. He wonders idly what's got Hermione's knickers in a twist, but not enough to sit down to breakfast and the _Prophet_ without showering, shaving, and dressing first. He isn't a savage.

He is knotting his cravat when the second Howler comes. "LUCIUS! STOP FIXING YOUR BLOODY HAIR AND GET YOUR VAIN ARSE OVER HERE!"

Lucius laughs out loud at this one. Draco really did dodge a bullet with that harpy. He said as much to Severus once – which was neither chivalrous nor tactful – but Severus only smirked and said that her temper came with some compensating fringe benefits.

He takes one more look in the mirror to make sure not one gleaming platinum hair is out of place, then heads down to the breakfast room. He knows it isn't anything too serious, or Severus would have sent a Patronus or floo called.

The _Prophet_ is folded next to his plate at the table, but he takes a sip of his coffee before picking it up, and then another. Finally, his curiosity gets the better of his perverse desire to see if he can wring one more Howler out of a hysterical Hermione, and he opens the paper.

MALFOY MIDLIFE CRISIS! the headline proclaims. The photo, taking up most of the front page above the fold, shows a tall, fair-haired wizard and a black-haired witch in dress robes standing on a balcony overlooking the Seine. The photographer must be on the next balcony over. The wizard says something and the witch looks up at him, her dark eyes smoldering, and he takes her in his arms. Capturing her lips in a searing kiss, he crushes her to him as her hands fist in his platinum hair. The scene repeats in an endless loop, witch and wizard devouring one another first with eyes and then mouths, again and again.

_Oh_.

The patriarch of House Malfoy, a lineage formerly free of both excessive heirs and scandals, takes one more sip of coffee, looks regretfully at his untouched croissant and eggs, and Apparates to Hogwarts.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

**Three weeks earlier**:

"She's a monster," Jack Diggory says. "A siren. A succubus."

"You'll get no argument from me," Becky Snape replies, pouring them both more tea. "So tell me again why I'm supposed to help you make her jealous so you can get her back?"

Jack sighs. "You know why."

"Because you _love_ her," Becky says, sneering the word _love_ as only a woman with half her DNA from Severus Snape can.

"Because I love her," Jack agrees miserably.

"Even though she's a monster."

"Even though."

"What fuckwits men are," Becky says.

"Go on, insult me."

"Because I know you like it?" she teases. "Because it reminds you of the way Cass treats you? Am I getting you hard?"

"You're a cruel woman, Becky Snape."

"I'd better be nice, then, otherwise you're likely to fall in love with _me_."

Jack grins. "You always know how to cheer me up."

"What are friends for?" she asks. Jack really is a good friend. After Gus, he's her best friend. And during the times when she's in a strop with Gus after one of their break-ups, Jack _is_ her best friend.

Sometimes Becky wonders what the hell is wrong with her that both of her closest friends are men, that she's been romantically involved with both of them, and that both of them are intermittently infatuated with Cassiopeia Malfoy.

Jack was her first boyfriend, but only for three days, from the time he asked her to the Valentine's Day dance in sixth year until Gus was so consumed with jealousy that he declared his undying love in front of all of Hogwarts in the middle of the dance floor. His undying love had lasted until seventh year, when he broke up with her and took Cass to the Valentine's Day dance.

The next time she dated Gus was after she went to work for Malfoy Genetic Counseling and started her doctoral program in genetics. When she was finishing her dissertation she started dating Adam, a fellow graduate student and a Muggle. Jack was happy for her (they had never tried the romance thing again after the sixth year debacle) but Gus was jealous, and once again Becky found herself being wooed by her best friend.

That go-round lasted a little over a year. At least Gus didn't dump her that time. It was Becky who grew increasingly dissatisfied until they mutually agreed to call it quits.

"So what do you say?" Jack says. "Will you go to the Ministry Ball with me?"

"I thought I already said no."

"No, you made a lot of sarcastic remarks about Cass and about me, but you didn't actually say no."

Becky smiles, showing the perfect teeth she's had since fourth year. "You really are well rid of her, Jack."

"I know, but it's like a disease. A drug. I'm an addict," Jack says. "I need my fix."

"What a load of shite. You need rehab, not another fix."

"Please?"

Becky frowns. "Would we have to snog?"

"Absolutely," Jack says. "I'd have to snog the living daylights out of you."

Becky rolls her eyes.

"She has to believe we're really together or she won't be jealous and want me back."

"Fine," Becky grumbles.

"You'll do it?"

"Yes," she says. "But no snogging unless the succubus is watching, and keep your hands off my arse."

"I'll be a perfect gentleman," he promises.

She raises a brow in the trademark Snape way. "You'd better be."

"You're the best friend a bloke ever had."

"Except most blokes don't snog the daylights out of their best friends."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to my beta readers (and friends) Fragilereality and turtlewexler, whose works in progress, _Unforgivable Sinner_ and _The Poison Garden_, respectively, are more than worth a read.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

God. The man is so fucking predictable. All it took was one look at her snogging Jack – who pleasantly surprised Becky by having learned a few things since sixth year – to make Gus come running back begging for another chance.

"Please, Becky," he says, holding her closer than necessary as they dance. "It'll be different this time."

"It won't," she says.

"How do you know?" he demands.

"Gus, don't you see the very obvious pattern here? Every time I date someone else, you suddenly believe yourself madly in love with me. Sixth year with Jack. Then when I was dating Adam. And now again. You're like one of Pavlov's dogs."

He frowns. "What?"

"Muggle science," she says. "The point is, you don't love me. Well, you do love me, as a friend, just as I love you as a friend, but we're no good together romantically. We've tried twice."

"Third time's the charm."

"Three strikes you're out," she counters, adding before he can ask, "Muggle sports."

"Can you honestly tell me you don't want me?"

Becky looks at the man who has been her closest friend since she was in nappies. The only son of her beloved godparents. He shares her biggest secret, their trip to that alternate timeline. She loves him. She just isn't _in_ love with him. She thought she was, when she was twelve. Then she thought so again at sixteen. She tried to tell herself she was when she was in grad school, but it was no good then because she was already…well, not in _love_, no, definitely not, but she was already…_attracted_ to someone else. And it wasn't Adam the Muggle, either. Adam was just another attempt to convince herself that she could be happy with someone other than the man she really wanted, the man she didn't _want_ to want.

"Yes, Gus," she says gently now. "I can honestly tell you that I don't want you. I love you, but I don't _desire_ you."

"I'm not going to stop trying."

Becky sighs in exasperation. "Oh, Gus…"

"It'll be different this time. You'll see."

"This isn't really what you want."

"It is," he insists stubbornly.

"You can't make someone want you if they don't."

"And you can't make yourself _stop_ wanting someone if you do," Gus counters.

_I hope that's not true_, Becky thinks miserably. She has _got_ to stop wanting a man she can't have, a man she has no business wanting for more reasons than she can count. First, and most obviously, he's married. Second, he's old enough to be her father. Third, she works for him. Fourth, his daughter is her longtime frenemy and romantic rival. Fifth, he was once engaged to her mother. Finally – and most importantly – he doesn't feel the same way about her.

Becky is relieved when the song ends and she can leave the dance floor. The man in question sees her and, smiling, lifts two champagne flutes from a passing waiter's tray and walks toward her.

"Thank you," she says, accepting the proffered glass from Draco and taking a sip. "Thanks for the dance, Gus," she says, dismissing him, or so she hopes, but he stands his ground, so she says, "Draco, I hate to bother you with work questions at a social event, but if you wouldn't mind…?"

"Of course not," Draco says.

"I'll leave you to it then," Gus says, moving off into the crowd.

Draco looks at her expectantly.

"Oh, there's no work question," she says. "I just wanted Gus to bugger off."

Draco laughs. "Trouble in paradise?"

"He's not my date."

"Does that distinction go to the young man who had his tongue down your throat earlier? The one now dancing a bit too close with my daughter?" he asks, glancing at Jack and Cass.

"I was doing him a favor. He wanted to make her jealous."

"Looks like it worked," Draco says. "So, are you as free with your favors for all your friends?"

Becky flushes. "Of course not."

"If you don't want to talk about work, would you like to dance?"

_If you had any idea_, she thinks, but only nods.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing, and to world class Brit-pickers and beta readers turtlewexler and Fragilereality.

Until tonight (May 19) I thought my next fic after this one might be Game of Thrones, rewriting the abysmal season 8 so far. After watching the finale tonight, I don't think I need to fix what the GOT writers broke. I'm still sort of processing it, but I thought it was a good ending to a bad season of an otherwise outstanding show.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Draco dances like a dream. Becky relaxes into his arms, breathing in his scent, letting herself experience this without any of her usual _I shouldn't be feeling this way_ recriminations. Just for the length of this song, she won't think about all the reasons this is wrong. The song changes and by unspoken agreement they keep dancing. It's all she can do not to rest her head on his shoulder, but she keeps her wits about her sufficiently to refrain.

From the time she saw that other Draco look at that other Hermione the way he did, that look was what defined romantic love for her, but it didn't translate into a crush on the Draco she knew. He was a grown man and she was a child, and she only thought, _Someday I want someone to look at me that way_.

It was many years before Draco became that someone. It was well after her sixth year romances first with Jack and then with Gus. It was even after she went to work for Draco's company. In the beginning, their relationship was purely mentor and protegée.

She was still in denial when she started dating Adam. She told herself something was off with Adam because he was a Muggle, and magic was such an integral part of her life that she couldn't connect on a deep level with someone with whom she couldn't share that. But it wasn't that Adam was a Muggle. It was that Adam wasn't Draco.

Then one day at work, when she had deciphered a particularly thorny string of DNA that had bedeviled Draco for weeks, he cried, "Dr. Snape, you're brilliant!" and picked her up and spun her around in his excitement. As he released her and she looked up at him, all the tumblers clicked into place and she realized that she wanted not _someone_ but _Draco_ to look at her that way, and had wanted him to for some time.

She was still with Gus at the time, and it took her a few weeks to admit to herself that it wasn't going to work, that she couldn't talk herself out of her ridiculous infatuation with a married man who didn't return her feelings.

She's danced with Draco before. Weddings, balls, this or that charity event. But tonight is different. Is it the way he's holding her? It's not inappropriately close. Draco's manners are impeccable and he wouldn't. But there's an indefinable _something_ between them that hasn't been there in the past.

It's the silence, she realizes. Normally people talk when they dance, but they haven't said a word. She looks up into his face and he smiles at her a little sadly. _Are you happy?_ she asked him all those years ago, and he said he was. And for most of the years since, he seemed so. He's a rich man with a successful business and a bevy of magical grandchildren, and without a Dark Lord breathing down his neck. During the years she's worked for him she's come to know him better, though, and there are times when she sees this wistful look in his gray eyes, and she wonders.

When the song ends, Becky and Draco are back in the crowd, talking with some Ministry bureaucrat about MGC's patents. They're getting into the weeds of patent law, and while Becky loves the science of what they do, the legal aspects of the work bore her. She leaves Draco to make his case to the bureaucrat, which he can do just as well without her, and moves off through the crowd.

She catches sight of Jack with his arm around Cass. His stupid plan worked because Cass is one of Pavlov's dogs, too, apparently. Can't Jack see that Cass is just going to do the same thing to him all over again? Just as Gus would do to Becky if she'd let him. She wishes Gus and Cass would get married and put everyone else out of their misery. They've been together and then broken up more times than Becky can count, and neither of them can seem to stay with anyone else for long.

She's said as much to Pansy, who despite her wish that Gus and Becky could have made things work, has admitted she agrees. Her son and goddaughter are never going to be a match, or at least not a good match. Pansy is standing near the dance floor talking animatedly her old Hogwarts Housemates, but when she sees Becky looking at her, Pansy motions her over.

"Join us, pet," Pansy says, motioning for a waiter and snagging a glass of champagne for Becky, and another for herself.

Daphne Nott kisses the air near Becky's cheek, and Millie Bullstrode pulls her into a bone-crushing hug.

"Hi Millie, Daphne," Becky says. She hopes that Daphne, who is Draco's sister-in-law, wasn't watching her make cow eyes at Astoria's husband while they danced. Astoria herself isn't here tonight. She seems to spend most of her time on increasingly lengthy trips abroad, coming back to England mainly for the births of Scorpius's many children.

"Gods, you look more like your father every day," Millie says.

"What an awful thing to say," Daphne chides.

"It isn't," Millie says. "He's terribly attractive." She looks at Severus sweeping Hermione expertly around the dance floor. "I fancied the pants off him all through Hogwarts."

Daphne's eyes widen. "You didn't!"

"I did," Millie grins.

"Well, I took it as a compliment," Becky tells Millie. She knows she isn't as good-looking as her brother Lucius, but she did all right in the genetic lottery, with her father's dramatic coloring and expressive eyes, and her mother's nose (thank Nimue!) and mane of curls which thanks to Pansy she can wear in any number of flattering styles. Tonight her hair is swept up with tendrils escaping to frame her face and skim over her bare shoulders. At work she usually wears it in a bun or a braid, but when she lets it down and charms it straight it hangs to her waist in a gleaming jet curtain she knows is one of her best features.

"You really need to stop dating arseholes," Pansy says, looking at Jack once again dancing too close with Cass.

"I'm not dating him. I was just helping him make Cass jealous." Becky nearly said _the succubus_ rather than _Cass_, but remembered just in time that Daphne was her aunt.

"Well, you made a bloody good show of it," Millie says.

"That was the point."

"Was there an ulterior motive to your dance with my brother-in-law, too?" Daphne asks.

"No, that was just dancing," Becky says, hoping she isn't blushing. She's asked her brother if there's a charm for that, but he just smirks and says possibly, the smug bastard.

"Astoria's off on another of her trips?" Pansy asks.

"Tuscany," Daphne confirms.

"If I were married to someone who looked like that," Millie says, glancing at Draco, "I wouldn't leave him alone for a weekend, let alone months on end."

"Darling, they have an _arrangement_," Daphne says.

Millie's eyes widen. "They _do_?"

Pansy laughs. "I thought everyone knew that."

Becky didn't, and is dying to ask what kind of _arrangement_, but doesn't want to expose her ignorance.

Too late, she realizes when Daphne looks at her with thinly veiled contempt and says, "My dear, didn't your mother tell you about these things?"

"Lay off, Daph," Pansy says. "You know as well as I do that Hermione probably doesn't even _know_ about things like that."

"An _arrangement_," Millie tells Becky, "is something most Pureblood married couples make eventually, once they're finished having children. It's sort of a _don't ask, don't tell_ policy about…extracurricular activities."

"I wouldn't say _most_ Pureblood couples," Pansy says. "If Neville suggested it to me I'd hex him into the next millennium."

"Maybe not _most_, these days, but enough," Millie says. "I may not be married myself, but I've…_known_ enough wizards with such arrangements to know they're not exactly an endangered species."

Becky tries not to stare at Millie in astonishment, but doesn't quite succeed.

"Don't be shocked, darling," Millie says. "A woman has _needs_, you know."

"So they just agree to…" Becky struggles to find the right words.

"To have discreet liaisons," Daphne finishes for her.

"And witches go along with that?" Becky says. She can't believe Draco would suggest something so sordid. She thought he was better than that. At the same time, she tamps down the traitorous thought that arises unbidden: _I can have him_. She doesn't want him _that_ way, and if he's treating his wife in such a callous manner, he's not the man she thought he was, and she shouldn't want him at all.

"Not _this_ witch," Pansy says.

"It isn't always the wizard who asks," Daphne says.

"Really?" Becky asks. Pureblood society really was strange.

"Really," Daphne affirms. "It was Astoria who proposed it to Draco."

_Oh_. Becky concentrates on keeping her expression neutral as her brain leaps from point A to B to M to X. Draco's wife is cheating on him. _She_ asked for this. It wasn't his idea. He _is_ a decent man, and free to…

Daphne narrows her eyes, assessing Becky. "He's still off limits to you, darling."

"Wh- what?" Becky stammers. "I didn't…I don't…"

Daphne laughs contemptuously. "Of course you do. We all have eyes, you know."

"Daphne, stop it," Pansy says, and turns to Becky. "What she means, pet, is that there's a certain code of conduct in these arrangements. It's permissible for a man to have a liaison with a widow or a divorcée or a married woman with an arrangement of her own, but not with an unmarried girl from a good family. It's considered bad form for a married wizard to steal a witch's best years, the years when she should be getting married herself and having a family."

The whole thing is twisted and sick and immoral but Becky doesn't say this because Draco's sister-in-law will just make more supercilious remarks and then go off and gossip to all of her other smug Pureblood friends.

"Hello, Mum," Gus says, joining them and giving Pansy a kiss on the cheek. "Dance with me?" he asks Becky.

"Yes," she says, because even though she doesn't want another round of _It really will be different this time _from Gus, she'd rather have that than stay here and have Astoria Malfoy's sister looking at her with a mixture of contempt, pity, and _stay the fuck away from Draco_.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to the world's beta readers, Fragilereality and turtlewexler, and to everyone who is reading. Millie is another character I planned only to mention briefly, and then she went and kind of took over the scene. Funny how characters do that.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Becky picks up one of the tissue samples and slides it under the lens of the microscope. The microscope is a new model just delivered by the goblin who has been making microscopes for MGC for decades. Draco commissioned the first magically adapted microscope decades ago, and has been tinkering with the design ever since. Each time the goblin delivers a new version, Becky thinks it is exactly what they need and can't possibly be improved upon, but Draco continues scribbling calculations, and the equipment continues to improve.

Today, Draco isn't tinkering with microscope design, but is sitting at the next lab table looking at tissue samples under a microscope identical to Becky's. He casts Muffliato so he can dictate notes without disturbing Becky's work. She watches his lips move soundlessly as his words appear on the screen. Nothing so archaic as a Quickquill for MGC.

The magically adapted computers and dictation software were produced not by the goblin, but by George Weasley, who began experimenting using computers to produce virtual reality simulations for his stores and online emporium. Magical VR now has adaptations George never thought of, and now he collects more patent royalties from pornographers than from businessmen like Draco.

Becky tears her eyes away from Draco and peers into the microscope again. Soon she is lost in the swirling helixes of DNA, which thanks to the power of magic she can see in far more detail than any Muggle geneticist. She scribbles a note on parchment every so often, preferring to do this the old-fashioned way and dictate her notes into the computer after she's finished working.

When she removes the last slide from the microscope, she sits up and rolls her neck to relieve some of the stiffness caused by sitting too long in one position. She looks at Draco, who is no longer working but looking at her intently.

Her breath catches at the expression in his eyes, but it is gone instantly, his gaze shuttered and carefully neutral. Did she imagine it? Was he looking at her with _longing_? With the same frustrated desire she herself has felt for years but has been so careful to conceal from him? With the same desperate, aching hunger with which that other Draco looked at the woman he was losing in that other world?

No. She didn't imagine it. She knows she didn't. Her mind reels and her heart is beating so hard in her chest that she thinks Draco must be able to hear it from where he sits. He looks away from her, starts to bend over his microscope again, and if he does, if she lets this moment pass…

"Draco," she says.

He straightens, looks at her, and she looks back at him with nothing hidden, putting everything she's been so careful to conceal on display for him. Now it's his breath that catches, and Becky knows she was right, knows she didn't imagine it. She stands and walks toward him.

He stands, too, taking a step toward her then stopping. So he's going to be _honorable_, insist on following those stupid Pureblood rules about which witches are off limits to a man in his situation.

_The hell he is_, Becky thinks, and continues forward until she's standing far too close for workplace propriety, or any other kind of propriety. She can see the indecision in his eyes, principle warring with desire.

"Please," she whispers, and the raw need in that whisper shocks even herself. She can see that it breaks something open in Draco, and then she's in his arms and his mouth is on hers. She lets out a little whimper and parts her lips as her body presses against his, partly because she's clinging to him, and partly because he's clutching her to him as though he's a drowning man and she is all that's keeping him alive. The kiss is by turns fierce and desperate, slow and sensual. He Vanishes her hairpins and her hair tumbles around her shoulders, down her back. One of his hands is buried in those black curls while the other grips her waist. She wants it never, ever to stop, but eventually they have to come up for air. They look at one another, both a little breathless.

"I'm sorry," Draco says.

"No," Becky replies. "Don't."

He steps back and runs a shaking hand through his hair. "I have no right…"

"I _gave_ you the right, you ninny," she snaps, frustrated.

He laughs, and the tension is broken.

"I _give_ you the right," Becky says softly. "It's what I want. What I've wanted for years."

It's what Draco wants, too. She can see it in his eyes, but he says, "I can't seduce you. Your parents..."

"You aren't seducing me," Becky replies with a mischievous smile, and brings her arms up around his neck again. "_I_ am seducing _you_."

He toys with a lock of her hair, giving her a small smile. "So I have no say in the matter?"

"None whatsoever," she says, and pulls his head down toward hers. He doesn't resist, and the second kiss is everything the first one was, and more. Becky can feel the _more_ pressing against her, and grinds herself against him.

"You're sure?" he asks.

"Quite sure," she confirms, and he Apparates them to his bedroom.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to the world's beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality and, to all of you who have read, reviewed, or favorited my stories.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Becky looks in the bathroom mirror at her swollen lips and shining eyes. She runs her hands through her hair, feeling the magic as the curls relax and untangle as her hair falls lower on her back in loose waves. She walks back into the bedroom and looks at Draco lying on the silk sheets, sated and beautiful and hers at last. She climbs back onto the ridiculously high bed and lies close beside him. His arm circles her waist, pulling her closer, then moves down to settle against her hip.

"What have I done?" Draco asks, his words belied by the movement of his hand.

"Only what I asked you to," Becky replies, then raises an eyebrow impishly. "Well, that and a few other things I hadn't thought of," she adds. "You are rather…accomplished, aren't you?"

He chuckles. "The advantage of sleeping with men who are too old for you, I suppose."

"We haven't slept yet," Becky points out. "And I suppose I oughtn't to, here. I'm not sure how these things work…"

"I should hope not," Draco says. "_These things_ aren't anything you should know about. And you don't need to."

She looks at him quizzically.

"I'm going to owl Astoria," he says. "I never wanted this ridiculous farce of an arrangement in the first place, only agreed to it because she insisted it would be better for the children. Well, my children aren't children anymore, are they? And I'm not going to subject you to the indignity of…_this_," he says with obvious distaste.

"No?"

"No. Once I'm divorced, I'm going to court you properly, if your parents don't kill me first."

Becky's mind reels. It is what she wants, but she didn't think this far ahead when she steamrolled over his scruples and basically insisted he take her to bed.

"If that's what you want," he adds.

She stares at him. Does he really have to ask? "Yes," she says. "It's what I want."

He smiles and puts his arm around her, and she lays her head on his chest. She's beginning to doze off when his voice rouses her.

"Becky," he says. "There's something I've always wondered about."

"What's that?" she asks.

"It was something you asked me once, many years ago. At Scorpius's wedding."

Instantly, she's wide awake.

"You asked if I was happy. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"Why?"

Becky sighs. "If I tell you, I'm afraid you'll be angry with me."

"Why would I be angry?"

"I did something awful that year. Something truly unforgivable."

"Nothing is unforgivable."

"Isn't it?" she asks, and strokes the side of his face. "Make love to me again, before I tell you, in case you never want to again after that."

Draco laughs. "I'm afraid you've got me too curious to perform. Honestly, love, how bad could it be?"

Becky takes a deep breath and releases it. "Is resurrecting the Dark Lord bad enough for you?"

Draco stares at her, speechless.

She meets his gaze, waiting.

"You were, what, twelve?" Draco says at last. "And the Dark Lord never came back after that business with the Potters, at least not in this–" He stops himself abruptly.

"Not in this timeline," Becky finishes.

"You know?"

She nods.

"How?"

"Your father told me," she says. "He told me the whole story, about my mother going back to your fourth year and helping my father destroy the Horcruxes."

"When did he tell you?" Draco asks. "_Why_ did he tell you?"

"He told me the day of Scorpius's wedding, the day I asked if you were happy. He told me because he was Disillusioned, eavesdropping on us when I asked you. He'd followed me when I followed you to the library."

"You followed me that day?"

"Yes, and Lucius followed me because he'd seen me watching you at the wedding, and wanted to know why."

"You were watching me?"

She nods.

"Now _I_ want to know why," he says.

"It was because of the unforgivable thing I did. With Mum's Time Turner." Becky leans down and picks up the nearest article of discarded clothing, transfiguring it into a silk dressing gown and slipping it on. This is _not_ a story to be told naked. "Gus and I used the Time Turner to go back what we thought would be thirty-four hours, but it turned out to be thirty-four years. We stupidly brought a souvenir back with us, and it turned out to be a Horcrux."

"So you came back to a present where the Dark Lord was alive?"

"Yes. My father was dead and you were Headmaster of Hogwarts. You were so good and kind and brave, in that world. You tried to protect the children at the school even when it meant being tortured by the Dark Lord. You were kind to Gus and me even though we'd brought back the Dark Lord with our stupid, stupid, _stupid_ prank. And…" she hesitates, then plunges on, "and you were in love with my mother."

She pauses and looks at Draco. His gray eyes are unreadable, and he waits for her to go on.

"You knew that helping us go back and fix things would destroy that world, and you'd lose her," Becky says, "but you did it anyway. Seeing the way you looked at her, just before we left..." She sighs. "That look haunted me. I couldn't get it out of my head. Ever since then, I've wanted someone, someday, to look at me that way. Then, somewhere along the way, it became _you_ that I wanted to look at me that way. And then you did, today, down in the lab. And now I've probably ruined everything."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to the world's beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality and to you, dear readers.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Becky watches Draco as he absorbs what she's just told him. She pulls her transfigured dressing gown more tightly around her, and bites nervously at her lower lip.

"I wonder," he says at last. "If you hadn't used the Time Turner, hadn't meet that other me in that other timeline, would you feel the same way about me in this one?"

"I've wondered about that myself," she admits. "Before I knew you felt the same way about me, I used to wish that I'd never gone back, never seen that you, because then I might be able to love someone else instead of being obsessed with a man I thought I could never have."

"But were you obsessed with someone who doesn't exist?" Draco says pensively. "I've never braved a Dark Lord, never protected anyone at the cost of my own life. I'm just a boring businessman, not a hero."

"You're the same man. Under those circumstances, you'd have done the same thing."

"But it's our circumstances that shape us," he says reflectively. "Your mother said I was different in her original timeline, that the things I'd suffered made me a different kind of man."

"When did she tell you that?" Becky asks.

"After some time had passed, and we were both married to other people, and could talk to each other like civilized people again." He's quiet for a moment, then continues, "It made me want to be better than I was in this timeline, made me stop and think about the kind of man I was, and the kind of man I wanted to be."

"Are you, now?" she asks, and when he hesitates, she says, "You're the kind of man I want you to be, anyway."

He smiles and pulls her close, kissing her temple.

Leaning her head on his shoulder, she asks, "You're really not angry about what I did?"

"You were a child. Children do stupid, thoughtless things."

Becky nods. It's true. And yet she's carried this guilt about it around her whole life.

"You should have seen what a horrid boy I was," Draco says.

"I did, actually," she says.

"You did?"

"We went back to your first year at Hogwarts," she says. "I saw you and Mum and Daddy and Pansy and Neville, saw what all of you were like then."

Draco grimaces. "Then you've truly seen the worst of me."

Becky smiles for the first time since beginning her confession. "You may have been a mean-tempered git, but at least you never caused the rise of a Dark Lord."

"I was a Death Eater, apparently, in the timeline your parents saved us from."

"You were a Death Eater in the one Gus and I created, too, but you'd come to regret it."

Draco raises a brow. "And you fancied yourself in love with a Death Eater, all these years?"

"When you put it that way, it sounds awful," Becky says. "But it's not as though I was having naughty fantasies about you in your Death Eater robes or anything."

"No?" he smirks.

She swats at his arm. "Gods, Draco, you couldn't joke about it if you'd seen what I did."

"I suppose not," he agrees. "But I didn't, and what you and Gus did was made right, and everything is fine now. You don't need to go on feeling guilty about it forever." He looks at her seriously. "Just promise me you'll never touch a Time Turner again."

"I promise," she assures him, putting her arms around him. "My world is exactly the way I want it right now, and I wouldn't change a thing."

* * *

If only they'd never touched that damnable Time Turner, Gus thinks. If only he could go back to that day and tell his younger self, _Don't do it, mate._ It would change everything.

Draco Malfoy. Becky was in Paris with Draco Malfoy. _Fucking_ Draco Malfoy. And all because they'd been in that other world where he'd been some kind of tragic romantic hero. Well, the Draco Malfoy they knew wasn't a hero. He wasn't tragic or romantic. He was just a lecherous bastard having a go at a girl young enough to be his daughter. A girl Gus loves.

"Another?" the barman asks.

Gus nods. When a fresh glass of Ogden's is set before him, he picks it up and swallows. Is this his third? Fourth? He doesn't know. All he knows is that a reporter from the _Prophet_ interviewed Cass for a story about Becky and Draco, how he'd left his wife to run off with her.

Gus didn't want to believe it, but the reporter showed Cass a picture of the two of them that left no room for doubt. The more he thought about it, the more he _did_ believe it. The way Becky used to talk about Draco and Hermione in that other timeline, how tears glistened in her dark eyes when she said it was so beautiful and tragic. Gus swallows the rest of his whiskey and signals for another.

The barman looks at him. "You think maybe you've had enough?"

Gus glares at the man, throws some coins on the bar, and stalks to the Floo. He's got Firewhiskey at home. He'll drink there in peace.

When he's in his own living room with another drink – a more generous one than that stingy bastard at the Leaky was pouring – he resumes his brooding. _This_ has been what was wrong between him and Becky when they'd been together. _Draco fucking Malfoy_ was what was wrong. Becky had some stupid, romantic fantasy of what love was supposed to be, a Draco Malfoy-inspired fantasy, and it kept her from appreciating Gus and his very real, if not very romantic, love for her.

He knows he wasn't the best boyfriend when he and Becky were together. The first time, in school, when he broke up with her to pursue Cass… That was bad. He knows that. But for fuck's sake, _look_ at Cass. He's only human, after all. Is _she_? He's wondered before if her mother might have been part Veela, the way she casts what feels like a spell on him. Or maybe the Veela comes from the Malfoy side, which would explain Becky's…_whatever it is_ with Draco.

The thing that keeps drawing him to Cassiopeia is like a madness in his blood. The sex is out of this world, but they can't spend their lives in bed, and every time they've been together for more than a few months they end up arguing. Usually about Becky. Cass is insanely jealous of her, jealous of their friendship. She always has been.

Gus has made it worse by going back and forth between the two of them over the years. He knows he has, but he hasn't meant to hurt either of them. He's honestly torn. He loves both of them but in different ways.

Becky is like part of his family. Since they were young children, she's been more dear to him than anyone except his own parents. Their friendship is relaxed and easy and he is safe in the knowledge that she accepts him just as he is. He wants to marry her and have children with her someday, to be a real family.

But it's always _someday_ that he wants to marry her, never now. In a moment of clarity when they broke up the last time, he admitted to himself that maybe he loves the idea of that hypothetical happy family with Becky more than he is actually _in_ love with Becky, the flesh and blood woman.

Now, the combination of alcohol and jealous fury at Draco Malfoy has obliterated that admission. All he can think about is that his sweet Becky is in Paris with that middle aged married wanker and he needs to do something about it.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Many thanks to turtlewexler and Fragilereality for A+ beta reading and Brit-picking, as well as for brightening my days when chapters of _The Poison Garden_ and _Unforgivable Sinner_ land in my emailbox for beta reading. I actually got to contribute a line or two to _Unforgivable Sinner_ when Fragilereality needed someone as nerdy as her Hermione to come up with an obscure Latin grammar question.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Severus has just finished shaving when he hears the clatter of breaking dishes from the other room.

"Oh, my fucking _God_!"

He chuckles. All these years in the magical world and Hermione still swears like a Muggle.

"BECKY SNAPE, GET YOUR ARSE HOME THIS INSTANT!"

Severus's brows shoot almost to his hairline. Is his wife sending a _Howler_? Hermione never sends Howlers. He pulls his shirt on, buttoning it as he walks into the kitchen where Hermione stands amid the wreckage of the teapot.

"Look!" she demands, holding the _Prophet_ out to him in a trembling hand.

He takes the paper, sits down at the table, and looks at the front page.

MALFOY MIDLIFE CRISIS! the headline screams in enormous font. In the photo, his godson passionately kisses his daughter, again and again and again. He sets the paper down and looks at Hermione.

"Well?" she demands.

"At least she's gotten over Longbottom," Severus says.

"At least she's…at least…what in all the seven hells do you mean _at least_?" Hermione sputters. "He's old enough to be her father!"

"I'm old enough to be yours," Severus points out, casting a Reparo on the teapot and Vanishing the mess.

"He's _married_!"

"That is a much more serious matter," he allows. "I shall definitely have words with Draco."

"Oh, you'll _have words_ with him, will you?"

"Would you prefer we dueled to the death?"

"Will you _have words_ with your daughter, too?"

"It has not escaped me," Severus observes, "that whenever Becky does something that displeases you, she is _my_ daughter as opposed to _our_ daughter."

Hermione snatches up her wand and Severus flinches, but instead of hexing him, she casts the Howler spell and shouts,

"LUCIUS MALFOY! HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT'S IN THE PROPHET? SEVERUS AND I NEED TO TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW! OUR QUARTERS. HOGWARTS. NOW!"

"Why are you sending a Howler to Lucius?" Severus asks. "He isn't the one in Paris with our – excuse me, _my_ – daughter, after all."

"Because I'm afraid I might cast an Entrail-expelling curse on Draco if I see him," she replies, "and I'm trusting that Lucius will talk some sense into his son."

Severus does not point out that it's been many years since Lucius has stopped _talking some sense into_ Draco about anything. In general, Draco is a very sensible man.

Hermione picks up the paper and starts reading. "That bitch!" she gasps. "That vile, loathsome, unscrupulous cow!"

Severus moves his chair over next to his wife's and starts reading the article along with her.

MALFOY MIDLIFE CRISIS!

By Rita Skeeter

_The apple seldom falls far from the tree. Homewrecking adulteress Rebecca Snape, daughter of the notorious Hermione Granger Snape, is following in her mother's scurrilous footsteps. Snape has been caught in a Paris love nest with Draco Malfoy, the happily married father of two and grandfather of five._

_Malfoy, who has been married to Astoria Greengrass Malfoy since before Snape was born, has been a faithful husband and devoted family man up to now, according to our sources. "I have no comment," Mrs. Astoria Malfoy told this reporter in a trembling voice as she dabbed a tear from her eye._

_Malfoy's daughter Cassiopeia was less circumspect, indicating that Snape has a history of seducing men who are otherwise attached, and in fact seduced Augustus Longbottom away from Cassiopeia Malfoy herself._

_"She can't stand for anyone else to be happy," Miss Malfoy said. "Isn't it bad enough that she had to ruin my life, without ruining my parents' as well?"_

_This is not the first time the names Malfoy and Snape have been linked in scandal. More than two decades ago, Draco Malfoy was engaged to Hermione Granger, Rebecca Snape's mother. With the wedding a few scant weeks off, Granger publicly jilted Malfoy, running off to a love nest in Cornwall with Severus Snape. Now, Granger's daughter is subjecting the noble House of Malfoy to a scandal even bigger than the one her mother caused._

_"My mother is heartbroken," Miss Malfoy told the Prophet. "Our family is shattered by this scandal."_

Severus finishes reading and looks up at Hermione.

"Well?" she demands.

"Skeeter's sources are unreliable, as always," he says. "Everyone knows Draco and Astoria have had an arrangement for years."

"A what?"

"An arrangement," he says. "I assumed Pansy would have told you. I thought women liked to gossip."

"By _arrangement_, do you mean…?"

"An open marriage, yes, but both parties are to be discreet."

"Oh, as long as Draco was bloody _discreet_ when he was seducing my daughter!" Hermione huffs. "Where _is_ that man?" she fumes, then casts the Howler spell again and shouts, "LUCIUS! STOP FIXING YOUR BLOODY HAIR AND GET YOUR VAIN ARSE OVER HERE!"

Severus tries very, very hard not to laugh.

* * *

**Author's Note**: I am rather in awe of how both of my wonderful beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality, and so many other fanfic authors keep coming up with entirely new stories with entirely new iterations of the same characters. Obviously, I have not yet mastered that trick, continuing to write sequels to my original story, building on the same versions of the characters. As this story is the last in the series, I'm either going to have to figure out how to press the reset button and start from a blank page, or retire from writing fan fiction. The latter option will free up more time for original fiction and my day job, but the former would be more fun.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"I'm not sure what you expect me to do, my dear," Lucius Malfoy says to Hermione. "He's a grown man, after all."

"And she's a child. Our _baby_," Hermione says.

"She's a woman of twenty-five," Lucius points out. "You were only twenty-two when you began carrying on with an aging Death Eater, I believe."

Severus keeps his expression carefully neutral.

Hermione glares at Lucius. "Are you saying you _approve_?"

"Certainly not," Lucius says. "I abhor scandal."

"So it would be all right as long as it wasn't on the front page of the newspaper?"

"Draco and Astoria have had an arrangement for years."

"I'm supposed to be okay with this because your married, middle-aged son has a fucking _arrangement_? I suppose you and Cissy have an _arrangement_?"

"Not that it's any of your business," Lucius says, "but no."

Hermione puts her head in her hands. "Why won't she answer me?"

"Perhaps because you sent her a Howler rather than a civilized letter?" Severus suggests.

"You could keep sending them as you did to me," Lucius suggests, "until you wear down her resistance."

"I just want her to come home," Hermione says miserably.

"She will," Severus says, "when she's ready."

"And in the meantime, I'm supposed to just leave her in Draco's clutches?"

"I'll owl her," Severus says.

"And I'll owl Draco," Lucius adds.

Hermione wipes her eyes. "You promise?"

Lucius pats her hand. "I promise, my dear."

* * *

"It's been a veritable parliament of owls," Draco says.

Becky looks at the heap of scrolls on the table next to their barely touched breakfast and the lurid photo on the cover of the _Prophet_. "I hardly know where to begin."

"Well, my choice is easy," Draco says, picking up a scroll with an ornate LM in a luminous silver wax. "The only ones for me are from Father and Astoria."

Becky looks at hers. One from Daddy, one from Jack, three from Mum, and four from Gus. She picks up her father's letter first.

_Your mother is in quite a state. I understand if you don't want to come home just yet, but do send her a letter, and don't stay away too long. I'll let you know when she's calmed down._

She has the best father in the world, Becky thinks. No censure. No judgment. Not even any teasing sarcasm, and she knows what restraint _that_ must have taken.

She breaks the seal on Jack's letter next, and smiles when she reads it. _Seven hells, Snape! When you do a thing, you do it up right, don't you?_

Now for the difficult ones. She picks up one of her mother's letters, the first one to arrive. Before she begins, she looks at Draco, who has finished reading both of his letters.

"Your mum sent Father not one but _two_ Howlers," Draco says.

"Hardly seems fair," Becky says. "I only got one, and Lucius hasn't done anything wrong."

"Didn't raise me right, perhaps?" Draco suggests.

Becky glances at Draco's other scroll, but doesn't ask.

"She'll agree to the divorce," he says, "but that photo has increased the price substantially."

Becky sighs. "How do you suppose they found us?"

Draco shrugs. "It's their job."

Becky pours herself more tea and starts reading her mother's letters. By the third one, Mum has calmed down a bit. Becky picks up a quill and begins a reply.

_I'm awfully sorry, Mum_, she writes. _I know it must have been a terrible shock seeing it in the paper like that. I realize it's probably too early for you to hear this, but I really do love him, and he loves me. He's getting a divorce. Please try not to be too angry at us, and please don't send Lucius any more Howlers. You can send me as many as you like, if it will make you feel better. I love you._

Becky seals the scroll and puts it on the tray with Draco's outgoing mail. Then, steeling herself, she picks up the first letter from Gus.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to the world's beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality and to you, dear readers.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Gus has been waiting in the Muggle coffee shop for fifteen minutes. He normally doesn't arrive for appointments early, but it took so much persuading to get Becky to agree to meet him that he didn't want to risk making her mad by showing up late.

She's precisely on time. He's already ordered a coffee for her, added milk but no sugar, the way she likes it, and surreptitiously cast a stasis charm to keep it hot until she arrived. She sits down across from him and waits.

Now that she's here, observing him with that cool, contemptuous expression, he finds himself at a loss for words. He spilled them all in those long, rambling letters he kept owling her, letters she either ignored or answered with only as many words as it took to tell him to leave off already, because it was over.

She breaks the silence first. "You're my best friend," she says. "But I'm in love with him."

"No, you're in love with the version of him you saw in that other world. He's not the same man."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I think," Gus snaps in frustration. "I think you _don't_ know that. Or, rather, I think your brain knows it but your…your hormones don't."

Becky narrows her eyes at him. "Leave my hormones bloody well out of this, Gus."

"We were good together," he says.

"We were a dysfunctional shit show together," she counters. "This conversation is over. And if you continue harassing me, this _friendship_ is going to be over, at least until you get past this nonsense and can behave like a rational person again."

Gus stares at her, dumbfounded. She's threatening to end their friendship? After more than twenty years? Friends since before either of them could remember?

Her expression softens. "That's not what I want," she says. "I want things to go back the way they were before. Before we tried to make something more out of this than it is. Because what it is, the friendship part, is one of the things I treasure most."

Gus stares down into his coffee cup. She doesn't know what she wants. She's confused. Or that bastard has used magic to seduce her. That's it. That _must_ be it.

"You aren't really in love with me," she continues. "You just _want_ to be in love with me. If you really were, you wouldn't keep going back to Cass, like a moth drawn to a flame."

His mother said essentially the same thing when she refused to plead his case with Becky. "Someday, I want you to have what your dad and I do," Pansy told him, "and I want Becky to have that, too. And I don't think either of you is going to have it with each other."

He wonders if he might have better luck with Becky's mother. She's always liked him. Yes. He'll go talk to Hermione.

"What does your mum think about all this?" he asks.

"My mother got to live her life," Becky says, "and now I get to live mine."

Reading between the lines, he knows he was right. Hermione will be on his side.

* * *

Unfortunately, it isn't Hermione who answers the door. Severus looks down his long nose at Gus with that same cool, contemptuous stare Gus saw earlier today in the same eyes in a much prettier face. The silence stretches between them as Severus doesn't invite him in, or say anything at all, or stop looking at him.

"May I come in?" Gus asks finally.

"To what end?" Severus asks.

"Severus!" Hermione admonishes, appearing in the doorway behind her husband. "Come in, Gus," she says, reaching past her husband to take Gus's arm and draw him inside. "I think I know why you're here."

Gus nods miserably.

"Have you seen her?" Hermione asks.

"Just now," Gus says, "but only for a few minutes."

Hermione sighs. "That's a few minutes more than I've had."

"Don't be dramatic," Severus says. "She's coming to dinner tonight."

Gus looks at Hermione hopefully, but can't quite bring himself to ask what he wants to with Severus looming and glowering the way he is.

Severus casts a Tempus charm. "I have a potion that will be ruined if I don't attend to it," he says, then turns that glower on his wife. "Do _not_ get involved in this, Hermione."

"She's my daughter. I _am_ involved."

"She's an adult witch. You are _not_ involved."

"Go on," Hermione says. "Don't ruin your potion."

Severus looks back and forth between Hermione and Gus, then reluctantly leaves for his lab in Hogsmeade.

"You'll talk to her for me?" Gus asks when the door has closed behind Severus.

"I'll try, at least," Hermione says. "But you see what I have to deal with here." She gestures toward the door.

"Surely he doesn't approve?"

"He doesn't approve, precisely. He just thinks Becky is old enough to make her own mistakes, and we should stay out of it."

"But he _does_ think it's a mistake?" Gus presses.

"He hasn't said one way or the other, really," Hermione says, then looks up in surprise as a silver mongoose rushes through the wall.

"Hermione, I need you in the Gryffindor common room!" the Patronus shouts with Neville's voice.

"What have those little fiends gotten up to now?" Hermione mutters as she rushes for the door. "Close the door on your way out," she calls to Gus as she hurries toward whatever mischief her Gryffindors are making.

Whatever the kids are doing can't be anything near as bad as what he and Becky got up to with Hermione's Time Turner, Gus thinks, heading for the door. And then he stops, hand on the knob. The Time Turner. It's here, somewhere in these chambers, and he can use it to fix this mess, to save the woman he loves from a married man who's taking advantage of her, a man she never would have looked twice at if the two of them hadn't used that Time Turner when they did.

He closes the door, and walks to Hermione's study.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Thanks as always to the world's best beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality and to you, dear readers. Thanks also to all the readers who have added _Past Imperfect_ to their favorites. It broke 700 this week!


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

He can only go back full years, so he arrives several weeks before the beginning of the school year. There aren't many children around Hogwarts, only the few whose parents teach there. He stands, Disillusioned, beneath the stands by the Quidditch pitch, watching his younger self and Severus Snape fly. Both of his parents were indifferent flyers, so Severus was the one who taught Gus.

Severus was always kind to Gus, right up until seventh year when he broke up with Becky on the eve of the Valentine's Day dance. Severus has never been anything but blandly polite to him since. Long after Becky herself forgave him, her father remains aloof.

He watches as man and boy land their brooms and walk back toward the equipment shed to put them away. Severus ruffles the boy's hair affectionately then heads back toward the castle, while eleven-year-old Gus walks toward the lake.

Twenty-five-year-old Gus follows, still Disillusioned. When his younger self is amid the trees by the lake rather than out in the open, Gus removes the Disillusionment charm and approaches.

The boy looks up, curious but unafraid. "Who are you?" he asks, tilting his head, frowning slightly as though trying to work out a puzzle.

"Who do I look like?"

"You look a bit like my dad when he was younger, only, not quite."

"Also a bit like your mum, maybe?"

The boy's frown deepens as he studies the man standing before him.

"I'm you," Gus says. "Fourteen years from now."

"How can you be?" he asks, astonished.

"A Time Turner," Gus says, pulling the golden device on its chain from under his robes.

"I thought Time Turners only let people go back a few hours."

"Most of them do, but not this one," Gus says. "This one let me go back fourteen years, and when I was your age, it let me and Becky Snape go back thirty-four years."

The boy's eyes widen. "Blimey!"

"I came here to tell you not to do it. It causes all kinds of problems for you in the future. So when Becky tells you her mum has a Time Turner, don't use it."

"What kind of trouble will it cause?"

"The kind you won't care about now," the adult Gus says, "but someday you will, and it will make you very, very sorry you ever interfered with Time."

Young Gus looks thoughtful.

"Do you promise not to use the Time Turner?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"Becky is the one who gets hurt if you do."

"Oh," the boy says, looking guilty. "What will happen to her?"

"I can't tell you that, but I assure you that if it does happen, you'll regret it."

"Okay, then I promise."

"Good man," Gus says, picking up the Time Turner. "I'll see you in fourteen years."

* * *

When the Time Turner stops spinning, Gus Apparates to the MGC offices on Diagon Alley. At least, he thought he did. He looks up at the glitzy cosmetics store before him, then around at the other shops and offices. Weasley's is there, and Flourish and Blott's, and the Quidditch supply. He looks back at the building that should be Malfoy Genetic Consulting, and frowns.

He walks to the post office and sends Becky an owl asking her to meet him at the Leaky. When there's no response after half an hour, he casts the Patronus charm and his sleek silver fox appears. "Becky, I need to talk to you. It's important," he says, and the fox scampers off. When Becky's silver badger doesn't appear, he walks back to the post office and sends another owl.

It isn't until he's sent the third owl and sat waiting with increasing impatience that a sleek black owl swoops into the Leaky Cauldron and bites him viciously as he retrieves the scroll tied to its leg. The parchment is sealed with a Gothic RS stamped in black wax. Inside, there are three words scrawled in Becky's familiar handwriting, not quite as spiky as her father's, but similar.

His mind reeling, he reads those three words again and again: _Fuck off, Longbottom_.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

_Longbottom_. Becky calls him _Longbottom_.

He owls Jack Diggory, asks to meet him at the Leaky. Jack shows up wearing a guarded look. Jack also calls him Longbottom.

"What do you mean, why?" Jack asks. "We were never friends in school. You lot hung with Ravenclaws sometimes, but generally my House was just fodder for your sarcastic remarks."

"But Becky and I were always friends, and you –"

"Becky Snape? What's she got to do with anything? She wanted as little to do with me as any other Slytherin," Jack says.

_Any other Slytherin?_ Gus's mind reels. Becky was a Slytherin. She didn't get re-sorted. Jack Diggory isn't his friend, or Becky's, and clearly thinks Gus is a lunatic. Gus wishes he could Obliviate him, but he's always been pants at memory charms, and he might leave the poor bloke addle-brained.

He needs to figure out what else is different because of what he told his younger self, but who can he ask? Not his parents. They'd know something was up straight off if he started asking about a lot of things he supposedly knew about. Maybe Cass. If she starts getting too suspicious, he knows how to distract her. But no. None of that now. He's going to be faithful to Becky, once she's speaking to him, of course.

Just then Dmitri Shcherbatov, who was in his year and House, walks into the Leaky. "Hey, Gus," he says, walking over.

"Have a seat, mate," Gus says. After they've ordered their pints, he leans forward and says, "Dima, this is kind of embarrassing, but… I think somebody slipped me one of those Weasley joke potions, because I can't remember things properly."

"What kind of things? You remembered who I was."

"Stupid little things, like who was in what House when we were at Hogwarts, stuff like that."

"You don't think I was a bloody Hufflepuff, do you?" Dmitri snorts.

"No, but I thought Becky Snape was."

"That girl eats Hufflepuffs for breakfast," Dmitri laughs. "Slytherins, too, if you catch her in the wrong mood."

"What's she up to these days?" Gus asks.

"Selling scary Potions, like she has been since she finished her Mastery."

"Did she study with her dad or mine?" Gus asks.

"You _really_ got slipped something, didn't you? Her father wouldn't teach her the kind of Dark Potions she was interested in, and your dad never learned most of them. She studied with this half-mad recluse in Romania. You really don't remember any of this?"

"Fucking Weasleys," Gus mutters, and his friend chuckles. "So where does she work now?"

"Not in England. They'd send her to Azkaban for brewing the shit she does. No one knows. You contact this half-goblin in Romania, horrible little wanker, and he gets the order to Snape, takes payment, and delivers the goods."

"You've met this goblin?" Gus asks.

"No, but Delilah has. She ordered a love potion from Snape."

"Did it work?"

Dmitri laughs. "Of course it did, mate. The girl might be as mean as they come, but she's fucking brilliant."

Gus's mind reels. Becky makes Dark Potions, so dark that Gus's Potions Master father doesn't even know them. She's a wanted criminal, escaping Azkaban only by living abroad. And she's _mean_? No one has ever called Becky Snape mean. Bitingly sarcastic on occasion, like her father, yes, but never unkind. "So who did Delilah dose?" he asks.

"Zabini."

"Are they still together?"

Dmitri laughs. "The potion made him totally obsessed with her, to the point that Delilah couldn't wait to get away from him. She ended up paying twice as much for the antidote as she did for the potion, which was a lot."

A silver swan sails into the tavern and says, "Where the devil are you, Gus? You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago."

Gus looks at Dmitri. "Where is she?"

"Blimey, mate, you've got it bad. Come on. I'll side-along you."

* * *

Cass's flat is enormous and ultra-modern. She's breathtaking in silver dress robes that float like gossamer. She looks him up and down, and glares at him.

He may be terrible at memory charms, but he's always been brilliant at Transfiguration, and with a flick of his wand he's in elegant dress robes.

Cass wrinkles her pretty nose. "Transfigured robes are so _tacky_," she says.

"Do I have time to go home and change?" he asks.

"Go home?" she asks, confused.

_Thanks, Dima_, Gus thinks. _You could have told me I fucking _lived_ with her_. He casts a Finite on his robes and walks into the bedroom. He Vanishes the clothes he's wearing to the laundry basket and is dressed in actual, non-Transfigured dress robes a moment later.

Now if only he knew where they were supposed to go. Cass is looking at him expectantly. "Would you mind doing it?" he asks. "I have a splitting headache and I'm afraid I'll splinch us both."

Cass sighs theatrically, takes Gus's arm, and turns.

* * *

They're in the Apparition foyer at Malfoy Manor. An elf vanishes their cloaks to the cloakroom and they move through a corridor to the ballroom. He has no idea what the occasion is, and tries to say as little as possible. He makes bland small talk, dances with Cass, and only pretends to sip his champagne, wanting to have his wits about him.

He looks around at the guests. Becky isn't there, and neither are Hermione and Severus, though Lucius Snape is. So are Gus's parents. While Dad is being besieged by Hogwarts parents, as he is at most social events, Gus pulls Mum aside and asks if she's seen Becky.

Pansy's face turns grim. "Haven't you hurt that girl enough? Leave her alone."

"But I –"

"But nothing," Pansy says. "You've made your choice, and it's the right one, as far as I can see. You and Becky were never suited, not that way, as much as I used to hope that you would be."

"I just want to talk to her. I have to."

"So owl her."

"I did," he says miserably. "Please, Mum?"

"I don't even know how to get in touch with her," Pansy says.

"You don't…?" Gus stares at his mother in confusion. She's Becky's godmother. Becky loves her.

"I wait for her to get in touch with me, same as everyone else. Well, everyone except Severus."

Severus. Of course. There's no way Gus is asking him. The man might kill him, if things between him and Becky are as bad as her note suggested.

"I think Lucius may know how to contact her, too," Mum adds thoughtfully.

Gus glances at Becky's brother. That's a surprise. They've never been particularly close.

"Not Lucius _Snape._" His mother rolls her eyes, as though he's just made the most dunderheaded statement imaginable. "Lucius _Malfoy_."

Gus glances at their host, who is standing with Cissy, Draco and Cass, and motions for Gus to join them. He crosses the ballroom to join the four Malfoys. Cass takes his arm and looks up at him with shining eyes. Her smile is radiant and his breath catches at her beauty. _Stop it_, he tells himself. She isn't The One. Becky is, or will be, once he finds her and convinces her that she is.

Astoria Malfoy joins them. She smiles fondly at her daughter, but doesn't even look at her husband, who, Gus realizes, looks like a pale shadow of the Draco Malfoy he's always known. He looks tired, haggard even, and somewhat disengaged from the proceedings.

Lucius looks at Draco, waiting, but Draco doesn't do or say anything. With a small sigh, Lucius conjures a small silver fork and taps it against his champagne flute. The room falls silent.

Lucius looks at Draco again, waiting, and after a moment the younger man says, "Thank you all for joining us this evening. It is my pleasure to announce the engagement of my daughter Cassiopeia to Augustus Longbottom." He raises his glass. "To the happy couple."

Gus barely hears the applause and congratulations. He is positively gobsmacked. And Lucius Malfoy knows it, he realizes, becoming aware of the way his fiancée's grandfather is looking at him. _His fiancée_. He looks down at the rock he didn't notice on Cass's finger earlier. It's massive. How could he have not noticed? Because he was distracted, obviously. Now, Cass is looking at him, waiting. Oh, right, he's supposed to dance with her, isn't he?

As they circle the floor, Gus looks at his fiancée's family. Astoria decamped for the other side of the ballroom as soon as Gus and Cass headed to the dance floor, but the other three Malfoys remain together, watching them dance. Cissy looks fond, Draco apathetic, and Lucius calculating.

He has to ask Lucius Malfoy about Becky, but the man is smart, and already knows something isn't quite right with Gus tonight. But he has to do it. He's changed so many things with that brief trip to the past, and he can't just let this new and unfamiliar timeline sweep him along. He needs to find out about Becky, and if that means making Lucius Malfoy even more suspicious than he already is, then so be it.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"These are the most marvelous lemon cakes," Lucius says as he sips his tea.

"They ought to be," Becky says, "You gave me the elf that makes them."

"Come home, my dear," he says. "Your parents miss you."

Becky sighs.

"_I_ miss you."

"I miss you, too, and Mum and Daddy. But they'll throw me in Azkaban. You know that."

"Not for _love_ potions," he says. "I keep telling you, I have a barrister who could get you off. When it's a matter of love, people make allowances."

"It isn't love when it comes in a bottle. It's magic. Dark magic." Becky pours more tea for both of them. "How's Draco?"

"Not good, I'm afraid. Since he closed down the business, all the life's gone out of him. In theory, he works for me, but he just sits in his oversized office transfiguring the stationery into birds." Lucius frowns. "It's very expensive stationery, too, and the birds shit absolutely everywhere."

Becky smiles despite herself. "Surely he could have found someone…."

"He tried for years," Lucius says. "But most witches and wizards don't have the patience or the stamina to for a Muggle graduate program. It's easy enough to get one of them accepted with a Confundus charm, but once they're in, they have to do the work the Muggle way, and most don't want to. The Squib scientists he had were good, but they couldn't do the spellwork that goes along with the science."

"I loved the idea of the work, Lucius, I really did, and the idea of working with Draco, but it would have meant having Cass and Gus always there, at every social event."

"I know," Lucius says.

"I was an idiot to have pined away after him all those years. I see that now. But back then…"

"And if he came to you now, asking for another chance?" Lucius asks.

"I'd throw him out on his arse," Becky says firmly.

"Because you can't trust him?"

She shakes her head. "Because I don't want him anymore. I'm over it. Over him."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

"Have you found someone else?"

"There have been a series of _someone elses_," she smirks. "I'm sowing my wild oats, as they say."

"In my day, only wizards did that, not witches."

Becky grins. "Good thing it isn't your day then, eh?"

Lucius looks at her seriously. "Do you swear that you're not in love with him anymore?"

"I'll take a wand oath, if you like," she says, pulling a sleek ebony wand from a Disillusioned wrist holster, "though I don't see why it matters."

"It matters because he asked me to help him find you."

Becky frowns. "He sent me a few owls earlier today, too. I wonder what he wants?"

"That's what I've been trying to work out. I have a suspicion, but…"

"What do you suspect?"

"A Time Turner."

Becky's brows lift. "What?"

"Your mother had one. Still has it, unless Gus has it now. Back before you were born, she used it to go back in time and change things."

"Change things how?"

"Destroy the Dark Lord."

"Voldemort? He's been gone since Harry Potter was a baby!"

"In the timeline we know, yes. Not in the one your mother came back from."

Becky sits quietly, thinking about this.

"When your mother came back from the past," Lucius says, "back to a world without a Dark Lord, where events had played out differently than she remembered, she was disorientated and confused by some of the changes. When I saw Gus the other evening, he was similarly disorientated, didn't know things he should have known, I surmise because those things were different in the timeline he remembers."

"We need to find out what he's changed," Becky says.

"Which is why I'd like you to see him."

"As soon as possible," she agrees. "Where?"

"My _pied-a-terre_ in Avignon?" he suggests.

"Perfect," Becky says.

* * *

Gus didn't want his fiancée's grandfather chaperoning his conversation with Becky, but that was the only way Lucius would agree to arrange it. So here they sit, Gus fidgeting while the two of them dissect his story, talking about him as though he's not even in the room.

"I can't believe you were a Hufflepuff," Lucius says.

Becky shakes her head. "We resurrected the fucking _Dark Lord_ and my House affiliation is the part of the story you can't believe?"

Gus is still trying to adjust to the way Becky looks, in a tight black corset, sky-high heels, and long scarlet nails.

"What I don't understand," Becky says, finally turning her dramatically made up eyes toward Gus, "is why you went back and told your younger self not to do it. Everything was put right with the timeline, and there was no harm done in the end."

Gus squirms. "Because it made you fall in love with Draco."

Becky's dark eyes widen. "Really?" She turns to Lucius. "Did you know about this?"

"First I'm hearing of it," he says.

She turns back to Gus, crossing her shapely legs and leaning forward, which gives Gus a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. "Was he in love with me, too?" she asks.

"I don't know about in love, but the two of you were having an affair."

"_Were_ we?" Becky exclaims, and a faint smile plays about her crimson lips.

"Wait," Gus says, "don't tell me you fancy him in this timeline as well!"

Becky shrugs. "What's not to fancy?"

Lucius leans toward her and whispers conspiratorially. "He and Astoria have an _arrangement_."

"_Do_ they?" Becky says, and smiles impishly at Lucius. "Perhaps you could bring him along next time you come to visit."

"I do not fucking _believe_ this!" Gus explodes. "What is _wrong_ with you? You're not the kind of girl who carries on with married men!"

"They have an arrangement," Becky says blandly. "And besides, I was carrying on with him in the timeline you erased, so apparently I am precisely that kind of girl."

"Bloody hell," Gus mutters.

"What business is Draco in, in that timeline?" Lucius asks.

"Malfoy Genetic Consulting," Gus says. "Becky works there."

Lucius exchanges a look with Becky, then turns to glare sternly at Gus. "Young man, you are going to restore that timeline."

"I'd just as soon not be a Hufflepuff," Becky says to Lucius, "but if it means Draco doesn't lose his business, and I can visit Mum and Daddy without risking Azkaban..."

"Do you know how to perform the Unbreakable Vow spell?" Lucius asks Becky.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't insult me."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, love. Not everyone does."

"I am hardly _everyone_," she sneers, and takes out her wand.

* * *

**Author's Note**: I will miss Lucius so much when this story is over. I have enjoyed writing him so much. I also enjoyed writing Alternate Timeline Becky, who turned out to be _much_ different than she was in the story as originally conceived. Even though this story is far less successful than my first one, I've had a wonderful time writing it, and I'm glad that—based on the reviews anyway—the few followers who _are_ reading it are enjoying it as well. Thanks as always to the world's best beta readers, turtlewexler and Fragilereality and to you, dear readers.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"I thought you said Becky would get hurt?"

"I thought she would, but I was wrong. I'm the one who ended up hurting her by trying to change the past."

The boy frowns. "All this is really confusing."

"I know," Gus says, "and I'm sorry."

His younger self shrugs. "It's okay. And at least I get to see what I look like when I'm grown up." He grins. "I'm glad I grow up to be so tall."

_Now if only you could not grow up not to be a complete fuckwit_, Gus thinks.

Gus Apparates to Diagon Alley and looks around warily. He heaves a sigh of relief when he sees not a cosmetics store but Malfoy Genetic Consulting in front of him.

One more stop and the Vow will be fulfilled. He can feel it pulling at him, drawing him toward the conclusion of this whole misguided misadventure.

* * *

"Augustus Longbottom is being here to see you, Master," the elf says.

"To see me?" Lucius asks. "Did you tell him my granddaughter isn't here?"

"He isn't being here to see Missy Cassiopeia, Master. I is already asking him that."

"Curious," Lucius muses. "Send him in then, and bring tea, please."

"What a pleasant surprise," Lucius says as a very agitated Gus enters his study and stands in front of the desk, twisting his hands nervously. "Tea?"

"No, thank you," Gus says stiffly.

"Won't you sit down and tell me what has you so upset?"

Instead, Gus reaches inside his robes, pulls out the Time Turner on its golden chain, and holds it out to Lucius.

"What's this? A Time Turner?"

"I'm under an Unbreakable Vow to bring it to you, and to give you these," Gus says, holding out a vial of memories.

"Curious," Lucius says, putting the golden device in his pocket and walking to the cabinet where he keeps his Pensieve. "To whom did you make the Vow?"

"To you."

"To me? I have no recollection of that." He frowns. "If I find that someone has Obliviated me, I shall be very cross."

"You weren't Obliviated," Gus says. "You'll understand once you view the memories."

"Very well." Lucius pours the memories into the bowl and looks at Gus. "Will you be joining me?"

"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you."

"As you like," Lucius says agreeably, and leans toward the swirling memories.

When he pulls out of the Pensieve some time later, Lucius's tone and expression are markedly less agreeable. "Come along," he snaps at Gus, stalking out of the room, down the corridor and out a pair of French doors into the garden. He strides across the manicured portion of the gardens and across a field toward the lake. Gus struggles to keep up until Lucius finally slows his pace as they approach the shore. He drops the Time Turner onto the bank and pulls out his wand.

Gus has never seen anyone cast Fiendfyre before, and he stares, transfixed, as flames in the shape of howling demons melt the Time Turner into liquid gold. Lucius's face is grimly focused, and beads of sweat emerge on his furrowed brow as he reins in the flames, which subside slowly until they are gone entirely.

As Lucius Vanishes the puddle of boiling gold, the anger seems to drain out of him and he heaves a heavy sigh. "And so it ends," he says.

* * *

"It will be easier if you see for yourselves without my trying to explain it all," Lucius says, indicating the Pensieve.

Becky and Draco exchange a look, then lean toward the swirling memories.

When they emerge, all three of them are quiet for a moment, then Becky says, "I'm glad you destroyed it, glad it's all over."

"As am I," Draco agrees, "but at the same time, I can't entirely regret that it happened."

Becky looks at him curiously. "Why?"

Draco gives her a playful smile. "First, because now I know you would have fancied me even without your trip to the past, and second," he continues, the smile turning into a smirk, "that was a smashing look for you, love."

Becky smiles. "I never would have thought I could carry off something like that."

"Oh, you definitely can," Draco assures her. "Perhaps a shopping trip this afternoon?"

"Reminded me a bit of Bella when she was young," Lucius muses, "before Azkaban ruined her looks."

Draco makes a face. "Thanks for ruining the fantasy, Father."

Lucius sighs. "I suppose Hermione will send me a Howler when she realizes her Time Turner is gone."

"How would she know you had anything to do with it?" Becky asks. "I'm certainly not going to tell her."

"Since when has my innocence exempted me from your mother's wrath?"

"Speaking of my mother's wrath," Becky says, "Draco and I have to be off. We're meeting my parents for dinner in Diagon Alley."

"It'll be the first time I've seen either of them since all this began," Draco says grimly. "I only hope Severus doesn't murder me."

"Oh, it isn't Daddy you have to worry about," Becky assures him.

"Wise of you to choose a public place, I'd say," Lucius says.

"I'm glad _you_ approve, anyway," Becky says to Lucius.

"My dear, of course I do," he replies. "I've always considered you part of the family, and now you truly will be." Then his brow furrows, and he mutters, "But I suppose you'll be wanting children."

Becky and Draco exchange a surprised look. "Not for quite some time yet," Becky assures Lucius. "Why does the idea distress you?"

"Between Draco having not one but two families, and Scorpius's little brood mare having another baby practically every year, within three generations the Malfoys will be as poor as the Weasleys," Lucius sighs.

"If you hadn't destroyed the Time Turner, I could've popped back to the nineties and bought us some Apple stock," Becky says.

"And change who knows what by doing it?" Draco asks. "No, thank you. Better a diminished fortune than risk losing what really matters," he says, pulling Becky into his arms. "My life has been turned upside down by other people's trips through time often enough. I'm happy to leave the past alone, enjoy the present, and look forward to our future."

* * *

**Author's Note**: After all the angst in reviews for Past Imperfect and _Present Imperfect_ about poor Draco not getting his HEA, I hope I've made it up to him in this story. No, it isn't with Hermione, but I'm with Lucius in thinking that it would have been one of those _Be careful what you wish for_ things, and they're both better off with the people with whom they ended up.

Thanks as always to the world's beta readers, Fragilereality (author of WIP _Unforgivable Sinner_ and many wonderful complete stories, including my favorite _Backwards_) and turtlewexler (author of WIP _The Poison Garden_ and the marvelous complete story _A Light in the Fog_).

Many thanks to all who have read my stories. Special thanks to those of you who have left a review or added it to your favorites list.


End file.
